Systems and methods for disambiguating a term based on static and temporal knowledge graphs

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods provided herein for a determining a meaning of an ambiguous term in a text segment based on a context term, a static knowledge graph and a temporal knowledge graph. These systems and methods access a first knowledge graph associated with the context term to determine a potential term that is the meaning of the unknown term. Upon determining that there are multiple potential terms in the first knowledge graph that could be the meaning of the unknown term, the systems and methods take into account the temporal dimension of relationships between entities for disambiguating the meaning of the unknown term. The systems and methods achieve this by determining a time stamp of the text segment and accessing a second knowledge graph associated with the first context term and related to the time stamp to determine the potential term that is the meaning of the first unknown term.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.15/223,698, filed Jul. 29, 2016 (now allowed), which is herebyincorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

The amount of natural language text is rapidly increasing. In order fora system to extract, catalog and utilize information from naturallanguage text, it is imperative for the system to correctly identify themeaning associated with a term presented in the text. This is adifficult task as many terms share the same common components andconsequently, many terms in natural language text are ambiguous.Incorrect assignment of meanings to ambiguous terms in natural languagetext can decrease the efficiency of natural language processing and havea detrimental impact on user experience. For example, incorrectassignment of meanings to ambiguous terms in natural language text candecrease the accuracy of natural language queries, which relies heavilyon natural language processing.

SUMMARY

Systems and methods are provided herein for determining a meaning of anambiguous term in a text segment based on a context term, a staticknowledge graph, and a temporal knowledge graph. These systems andmethods, upon identifying an unknown term in a text segment, analyze thetext segment for a context term. The systems and methods access a firstknowledge graph (i.e., the static knowledge graph) associated with thecontext term to determine a potential term that is the meaning of theunknown term. The systems and methods determine that the unknown term isan ambiguous term upon determining that there is more than one potentialterm in the first knowledge graph that could be the meaning of theunknown term. In this case, the systems and methods take into accountthe temporal dimension of relationships between entities fordisambiguating the meaning of the unknown term. The systems and methodsachieve this by determining a time stamp of the text segment andaccessing a second knowledge graph (i.e., the temporal knowledge graph)associated with the first context term and related to the time stamp todetermine the potential term that is the meaning of the first unknownterm.

In some aspects, an interactive media guidance application identifies afirst unknown term in the text segment. For example, the interactivemedia guidance application may generate for display the text segment“Bernie Sanders has called out Clinton for soliciting donations frombanks and corporations” for a user. The interactive media guidanceapplication may determine that the term “Clinton” has no metadata oridentifier tag associated with it that provides its meaning. In thiscase, the interactive media guidance application determines that theterm “Clinton” is an unknown term. The interactive media guidanceapplication analyzes the text segment for a first context term. Theinteractive media guidance application may use text mining techniques(e.g., named entity recognition, coreference, sentiment analysis,semantic analysis etc.) to determine the first context term. Forexample, the interactive media guidance application identifies “BernieSanders” as the first context term.

The interactive media guidance application determines a meaning of thefirst unknown term by accessing a first knowledge graph associated withthe first context term to identify a potential term that is the meaningof the first unknown term. Knowledge repositories contain informationabout millions of entities and their relationships with other entities.Knowledge repositories contain information about entities from a widevariety of sources (e.g., encyclopedia, Wikipedia, news articles, socialmedia, and other similar sources) and can provide comprehensiveknowledge graphs associated with an entity. These knowledge graphstypically include all relationships between an entity and other entitiesaccumulated over all periods of time. In some embodiments, theinteractive media guidance application may identify a potential termthat could be the meaning of the unknown term based on similaritybetween the potential term and the unknown term. For example, the firstknowledge graph associated with the first context term “Bernie Sanders”may be derived from general knowledge corpus such as Wikipedia. Theinteractive media guidance application may identify terms “BillClinton,” “Hillary Clinton” and “Ryan Clinton” as potential termsbecause of their similarity to the unknown term “Clinton.”

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance application may usea metadata descriptor of a term in the first knowledge graph todetermine whether the term is a potential term. For example, the firstknowledge graph may include the term “Secretary of State” and a portionof the associated metadata may be “Hillary Clinton.” In this case, theinteractive media guidance application may determine “Secretary ofState” as a potential term. In some embodiments, the interactive mediaguidance application may use strength of association between a term andthe first context term as a second step to filter out the most likelypotential terms. Strength of association may be an inverse of normalizeddistance between two terms in the knowledge graph. For example,normalized strength of association between “Bernie Sanders” and each of“Bill Clinton,” “Hillary Clinton,” “Ryan Clinton,” and “Secretary ofState” is 0.7, 0.7, 0.2 and 0.2 respectively. If the required thresholdstrength of association is 0.5, then the interactive media guidanceapplication may determine, based on the first knowledge graph, thatterms “Bill Clinton” and “Hillary Clinton” are potential terms thatcould be the meaning of the first unknown term.

The interactive media guidance application determines whether the firstknowledge graph includes more than one potential term that could be themeaning of the first unknown term. For example, the interactive mediaguidance application may use a Boolean comparison function to determinewhether the value of a counter corresponding to the number of potentialterms is greater than one. Upon determining that the first knowledgegraph includes more than one potential term that could be the meaning ofthe first unknown term, the interactive media guidance applicationdetermines a time stamp associated with the text segment. The time stampcan be any period of time, depending on the origin and content of thetext segment. For example, if the text segment is a report detailingchanges in campaign donation policies during 2010 to 2016, the timestamp may be 2010 to 2016. For a social media status update (e.g., aTwitter post) or a natural language query, the time stamp may be theexact date and time of the update or query. The time stamp is used toderive information about the time that the content of the text segmentrelates to.

The interactive media guidance application may use metadata associatedwith the text segment to determine the time stamp. For example, onlinearticles may have a date of origin associated with them. Alternatively,the interactive media guidance application may use text miningtechniques to extract time indicators from the text segment itself. Forexample, the text segment may contain dates of events detailed in thetext segment (e.g., “On Jan. 11, 2016, Bernie Sanders called out Clinton. . . ”) or other contextual information that may be used to extrapolatethe time stamp (e.g., “Speaking to his supporters on the coldest winterday recorded in 30 years, Bernie Sanders called out Clinton . . . ”).For example, the interactive media guidance application may determinethat the time stamp associated with the text segment is Jan. 11, 2016.

The interactive media guidance application determines the meaning of thefirst unknown term by accessing a second knowledge graph associated withthe first context term and related to the time stamp to determine thepotential term that is the meaning of the first unknown term.Association between entities changes over time. The second knowledgegraph, because it is associated with a specific time related to the timestamp rather than all time periods, captures the temporal dimension ofassociations between entities. For example, if news that school boy“Ryan Clinton” donated his lunch money to the Bernie Sanders campaignwas trending during one specific week, the association between the terms“Bernie Sanders” and “Ryan Clinton” would be strong in a knowledge graphderived solely from a corpus associated with that week. However, theassociation between the same two terms would be weak in a knowledgegraph (e.g., the first knowledge graph) derived from a corpus over allperiods of time.

The interactive media guidance application, by accessing the secondknowledge graph related to the time stamp, is able to determineassociations that were most important during a time period relevant tothe text segment. For example, the second knowledge graph associatedwith the first context term “Bernie Sanders” and related to the timestamp Jan. 11, 2016, may be a knowledge graph capturing information fromnews articles, social media and other corpus during the week leading upto Jan. 11, 2016. Techniques by which the interactive media guidanceapplication may determine from the second knowledge graph the potentialterm that is the meaning of the first unknown term discussed previouslyare applicable here.

In some embodiments, the second knowledge graph is associated with aspecific time interval whose position is determined based on the timestamp of the text segment. For example, the specific time interval maybe a week. The specific time interval may be a default time interval. Byusing a specific time interval, the interactive media guidanceapplication is able to limit the amount of corpus that the knowledgegraph is derived from, facilitating the identification of trendingassociations. The position of the specific time interval is determinedbased on the time stamp to ensure that the second knowledge graph isderived from the corpus most likely to help disambiguate ambiguous termsin the text segment. From the previous example, where the time stamp wasJan. 11, 2016, the interactive media guidance application may determinethe position of the week is to be the week leading up to Jan. 11, 2016.In this case, the interactive media guidance application would accessthe second knowledge graph derived from corpus from the week of Jan.4-11, 2016.

In some embodiments, the duration of the specific time intervalassociated with the second knowledge graph is shorter than duration oftime interval associated with the first knowledge graph. For example,the first knowledge graph may be a static knowledge graph derived fromcorpus spanning years. The second knowledge graph, on the other hand,may be a temporal knowledge graph derived from a corpus associated witha certain day.

In some embodiments, the position of the specific time intervalassociated with the second knowledge graph is such that the specifictime interval associated with the second knowledge graph overlaps withthe time stamp. The overlap between the specific time interval and thetime stamp may be partial or complete. For example, the time stamp maybe Jan. 11, 2016 and the specific time interval may be Jan. 7-14, 2016.For example, the time stamp may be Jan. 11-Mar. 11, 2016 and thespecific time interval may be Jan. 1-31, 2016. In some embodiments, theposition of the specific time interval associated with the secondknowledge graph is such that the specific time interval associated withthe second knowledge graph precedes the time stamp of the text segment.For example, the text segment containing the ambiguous term may be anatural language query about a past event, received on Jan. 11, 2016. Inthis case, the specific time interval associated with the secondknowledge graph may be Jan. 3-6, 2016. In some embodiments, the positionof the specific time interval associated with the second knowledge graphis such that the specific time interval associated with the secondknowledge graph follows the time stamp of the text segment. For example,the text segment containing the ambiguous term may be a social mediapost at 3:33 pm, Jan. 11, 2016. The interactive media guidanceapplication may determine that social media posts written in response tothe original social media post would be the best corpus to derive thesecond knowledge graph from. Accordingly, the specific time intervalassociated with the second knowledge graph may be 3:34 pm-6:00 pm, Jan.11, 2016.

In some embodiments, duration of the specific time interval is based inpart on time indicators identified by analyzing the text segment. Forexample, the interactive media guidance application may use text miningtechniques to identify time indicators (e.g., today, during the week of,all of last month, during the past two years etc.) that may be presentin a text segment and that may be associated with the ambiguous term.For example, the interactive media guidance application may analyze thenatural language query “What did Clinton say to Bernie Sanders at thefund raiser today?” and determine “today” is a time indicator associatedwith the ambiguous term “Clinton.” The interactive media guidanceapplication may determine, based on the time indicator “today” that theduration of the specific time interval should be a day.

In some embodiments, duration of the specific time interval is based inpart on source of the text segment. For example, the interactive mediaguidance application may determine the source of the text segment is adaily newspaper (e.g., the New York Times). In this case, theinteractive media guidance application may set the duration of thespecific time interval to be a week as the daily newspaper is mostlikely to refer to events that happened during the past few days. If theinteractive media guidance application determines that the source of thetext segment is a microblog platform (e.g., Twitter) where topics beingdiscussed change more frequently, the interactive media guidanceapplication may set the duration of the specific time interval to be aday. For natural language queries received from a user, the interactivemedia guidance application may identify the user (e.g., by using userprofile information). The interactive media guidance application maythen use information associated with the user (e.g., query historyassociated with the user profile, media consumption patterns and othersuch information) to determine the duration of the specific timeinterval. For example, the interactive media guidance application maydetermine that a query is received from user Tommy. The interactivemedia guidance application may determine from Tommy's user profile thathe predominantly reads daily newspapers and has frequent queries relatedto events in these newspapers. In this case, the interactive mediaguidance application may determine that an ambiguous term in Tommy'squery is most likely to refer to recent events and set the specific timeinterval to be a week.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance applicationdetermines that the first knowledge graph does not include any potentialterm that could be the meaning of the first unknown term. For example,for the text segment “Megan Kelly, Bernie Sander, and Clinton were allat the debate,” the interactive media guidance application may identify“Clinton” as the unknown term and “Megan Kelly” as the first contextterm. The interactive media guidance application may access the firstknowledge graph associated with the first context term “Megan Kelly” todetermine that there is a no potential term in the first knowledge graphthat could be the meaning of the unknown term “Clinton.” The interactivemedia guidance application may then identify a second context term inthe text segment. For example, the interactive media guidanceapplication may identify “Bernie Sanders” as the second context term.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance applicationdetermines the meaning of the first unknown term based on the secondcontext term. In this case, the interactive media guidance applicationmay determine the meaning of the first unknown term “Clinton” based onthe second context term “Bernie Sanders” by accessing a knowledge graphassociated with Bernie Sanders. Upon determining the term “Clinton” isambiguous, the interactive media guidance application may access anotherknowledge graph associated with the term “Bernie Sanders” and related tothe stamp associated with the time stamp of the text segment todetermine the meaning of the term “Clinton.”

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance application maydetermine that the second knowledge graph includes more than onepotential term that could be the meaning of the first unknown term. Forexample, for the text segment “Bernie Sanders has just called outClinton for soliciting donations from banks and corporations,” theinteractive media guidance application may determine that the secondknowledge graph contains the terms “Hillary Clinton” and “Bill Clinton,”both of which could be the meaning of the first unknown term. In someembodiments, the interactive media guidance application may adjust atleast one of duration of the specific time interval and the position ofthe specific time interval. The interactive media guidance applicationmay change (i.e., increase or decrease) the duration of the specifictime interval while keeping the position constant. Alternatively, theinteractive media guidance application may keep the duration of thespecific time interval constant while changing the position of thespecific time interval. In some embodiments, the interactive mediaguidance application may change both the duration and position of thespecific time interval.

For example, the time stamp of the text segment may have been Jan. 11,2016, the duration of the specific time interval may have been one weekand the position of the specific time interval may have been such thatits end point coincided with the time stamp. In this case, the secondknowledge graph would be derived from a corpus from Jan. 5-11, 2016.Because this second knowledge graph includes more than one potentialterm that could be the meaning of the first unknown term “Clinton,” theinteractive media guidance application may decrease the duration of thespecific time interval to be three days so that the specific timeinterval now ranges from Jan. 9-11, 2016 (e.g., to limit the amount ofextraneous corpus). Alternatively, the interactive media guidanceapplication may keep the duration of the specific time interval constantat seven days and change the position so that the starting point of thespecific time interval coincides with the time stamp (i.e., the specifictime interval is now Jan. 11-17, 2016).

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance application maydetermine the meaning of the first unknown term by accessing a thirdknowledge graph associated with the first context term and the specifictime interval to determine the potential term that is the meaning of thefirst unknown term. For example, the interactive media guidanceapplication may access a third knowledge graph associated with theadjusted specific time interval Jan. 9-11, 2016 to determine thepotential term that is the meaning of the first unknown term “Clinton.”Techniques by which the interactive media guidance application maydetermine from the third knowledge graph the potential term that is themeaning of the first unknown term discussed previously are applicablehere.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance applicationdetermines that the second knowledge graph does not include anypotential term that could be the meaning of the first unknown term. Forexample, the interactive media guidance application may determine thatthere is no term that is similar to the unknown term “Clinton” in thesecond knowledge graph. The interactive media guidance application mayadjust at least one of duration of the specific time interval and theposition of the specific time interval. From the previous example, thespecific time interval may be Jan. 5-11, 2016. The interactive mediaguidance application may increase the duration of the specific timeinterval to two weeks to incorporate more corpus. In this case, thespecific time interval now ranges from Dec. 29, 2015-Jan. 11, 2016.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance application maydetermine the meaning of the first unknown term by accessing a fourthknowledge graph associated with the first context term and the specifictime interval to determine the potential term that is the meaning of thefirst unknown term. For example, the interactive media guidanceapplication may access a fourth knowledge graph associated with theadjusted specific time interval Dec. 29, 2015-Jan. 11, 2016 to determinethe potential term that is the meaning of the first unknown term“Clinton.”

As the amount of natural language text increases, the number of meaningsthat could be associated with a term increases, resulting in an increasein the number of ambiguous terms. This makes the task of identifying thecorrect meaning associated with an ambiguous term more complex. Forexample, the system may receive a natural language text query “Who arethe major donors for Bernie Sanders and Clinton campaigns?” In thiscase, it is necessary for the system to identify which “Clinton” isbeing referred to in the query in order to minimize the probability ofproviding a wrong answer. Similarly, if a system is analyzing the textsegment “Clinton received a major donation from the Koch brothers,” thesystem must determine which “Clinton” is being referred to in the textsegment to determine whether “Koch brothers” should be included in thequery result. Incorrect assignment of meanings to ambiguous terms candecrease the efficiency of natural language processing and havedetrimental impact on the user experience.

Conventional systems are limited to identifying the meaning of anambiguous term in a text segment using context terms and knowledgegraphs that are associated with all periods of time (e.g., staticknowledge graphs). However, because associations between terms changeover time and static knowledge graphs fail to capture this temporaldimension, conventional systems are not able to identify associationsthat are most relevant at a given point in time. Consequently,conventional systems miss key inferences and frequently assign erroneousmeanings to ambiguous terms.

Systems and methods provided herein address this issue by using contextterms, static knowledge graphs and temporal knowledge graphs to identifythe meaning of an ambiguous term in a text segment. Temporal knowledgegraphs capture the relationships between the context term and thevarious meanings of the ambiguous terms during a specific time period.By using a temporal knowledge graph related to the time stamp of thetext segment, the systems and methods are able to identify whichassociations were most relevant at the time of the text segment anddetermine the meaning of the ambiguous term based on these associations.

It should be noted that the systems, methods, apparatuses, and/oraspects described above may be applied to, or used in accordance with,other systems, methods, apparatuses, and/or aspects described in thisdisclosure.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The above and other objects and advantages of the disclosure will beapparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, takenin conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like referencecharacters refer to like parts throughout, and in which:

FIG. 1 depicts an illustrative display of the interactive media guidanceapplication in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 2 depicts another illustrative display of the interactive mediaguidance application in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 3 depicts yet another illustrative display of the interactive mediaguidance application in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 4 shows an illustrative embodiment of portion of a knowledge graphassociated with a first context term in the text segment, in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 5 shows another illustrative embodiment of a portion of a knowledgegraph associated with the first context term in a text segment, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 6 shows an illustrative embodiment of a display screen that may beused to provide media guidance application listings and other mediaguidance information, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 7 shows another illustrative embodiment of a display screen thatmay be used to provide media guidance application listings, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of an illustrative user equipment (UE) devicein accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 9 is a block diagram of an illustrative media system in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 10 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in determining ameaning of the first unknown term in the text segment based on a firstcontext term and a temporal knowledge graph in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 11 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in step 1018 (FIG.10) when determining the meaning of the first unknown term by accessingthe second knowledge graph associated with the first context term andrelated to the time stamp of the text segment in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The described systems and methods provide for determining a meaning ofan ambiguous term in a text segment based on a context term, a staticknowledge graph, and a temporal knowledge graph. These systems andmethods, upon identifying an unknown term in a text segment, analyze thetext segment for a context term. The systems and methods access a firstknowledge graph (i.e., the static knowledge graph) associated with thecontext term to determine a potential term that is the meaning of theunknown term. The systems and methods determine that the unknown term isan ambiguous term upon determining that there is more than one potentialterm in the first knowledge graph that could be the meaning of theunknown term. In this case, the systems and methods take into accountthe temporal dimension of relationships between entities fordisambiguating the meaning of the unknown term. The systems and methodsachieve this by determining a time stamp of the text segment andaccessing a second knowledge graph (i.e., the temporal knowledge graph)associated with the first context term and related to the time stamp todetermine the potential term that is the meaning of the first unknownterm.

As referred to herein, an “interactive media guidance application,” or a“media guidance application” or, sometimes, a “guidance application” isan application that allows a user to consume, and/or navigate tocontent. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may beprovided as an online application (i.e., provided on a website), or as astand-alone application on a server, user device. In some embodiments,control circuitry installed on various devices and platforms may executethe media guidance application, as described in more detail below. Insome embodiments, the media guidance application and/or any instructionsfor performing any of the embodiments discussed herein may be encoded oncomputer readable media. Computer readable media includes any mediacapable of storing data. The computer readable media may be transitory,including, but not limited to, propagating electrical or electromagneticsignals, or may be non-transitory including, but not limited to,volatile and nonvolatile computer memory or storage devices such as ahard disk, floppy disk, USB drive, DVD, CD, media card, register memory,processor caches, Random Access Memory (“RAM”).

FIG. 1 depicts an illustrative display of the interactive media guidanceapplication in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. FIG.1 depicts an illustrative display 100 which may be displayed on any userdevice (e.g., user television equipment 902, user computer equipment904, or wireless user communications device 906, described in FIG. 9below). Control circuitry 804 may cause displays to be displayed ondisplay 812 using the one or more of the processes described in FIGS.10-11.

Display 100 is an example of a display generated by the interactivemedia guidance application for presenting a text segment to a user.Display 100 includes the text segment “Bernie Sanders has just calledout Clinton for soliciting donations from banks and corporations” 102.The interactive media guidance application identifies a first unknownterm in the text segment “Bernie Sanders has just called out Clinton forsoliciting donations from banks and corporations” 102. The interactivemedia guidance application may determine that the term “Clinton” 106 hasno metadata or identifier tag associated with it that provides itsmeaning. In this case, the interactive media guidance applicationdetermines that the term “Clinton” 106 is a first unknown term. Theinteractive media guidance application analyzes the text segment “BernieSanders has just called out Clinton for soliciting donations from banksand corporations” 102 for a first context term. The interactive mediaguidance application may use text mining techniques (e.g., named entityrecognition, coreference, sentiment analysis, semantic analysis, andother text mining techniques) to determine the first context term. Forexample, the interactive media guidance application identifies “BernieSanders” 104 as the first context term. Display 100 also includes a timestamp “Jan. 11, 2016” associated with the text segment “Bernie Sandershas just called out Clinton for soliciting donations from banks andcorporations” 102.

FIG. 2 depicts another illustrative display of the interactive mediaguidance application in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure. FIG. 2 depicts an illustrative display 200 which may bedisplayed on any user device (e.g., user television equipment 902, usercomputer equipment 904, and wireless user communications device 906,described in FIG. 9 below). Control circuitry 804 may cause displays tobe displayed on display 812 using the one or more of the processesdescribed in FIGS. 10-11.

Display 200 is an example of a display generated by the interactivemedia guidance application for presenting the user with the meaning ofthe first unknown term in the text segment. The interactive mediaguidance application may determine using the first context term “BernieSanders” 104 and the first and second knowledge graphs that the meaningof the first unknown term “Clinton” 202 is “Hillary Clinton” 204. Theinteractive media guidance application may display the meaning “HillaryClinton” 204 as a pop-up display when the user selects the first unknownterm “Clinton” 202 via user input interface 810. The interactive mediaguidance application may also generate for display the meaning “HillaryClinton” 204 without requiring any input from the user.

FIG. 3 depicts another illustrative display of the interactive mediaguidance application in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure. FIG. 3 depicts an illustrative display 300 which may bedisplayed on any user device (e.g., user television equipment 902, usercomputer equipment 904, and wireless user communications device 906,described in FIG. 9 below). Control circuitry 804 may cause displays tobe displayed on display 812 using the one or more of the processesdescribed in FIGS. 10-11.

Display 300 is another example of a display generated by the interactivemedia guidance application for presenting the user with the meaning ofthe first unknown term in the text segment. In some embodiments, theinteractive media guidance application may substitute the first unknownterm “Clinton” 106 in the text segment “Bernie Sanders has just calledout Clinton for soliciting donations from banks and corporations” 102with the meaning “Hillary Clinton” 302.

The interactive media guidance application determines a meaning of thefirst unknown term by accessing a first knowledge graph associated withthe first context term to identify a potential term that is the meaningof the first unknown term. For example, the first knowledge graphassociated with the first context term “Bernie Sanders” 104 may bederived from a general knowledge corpus such as Wikipedia.

FIG. 4 shows an illustrative embodiment of a portion of a knowledgegraph associated with a first context term in the text segment, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. Knowledge graphs andtheir features are described in greater detail in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 14/501,504, filed Sep. 30, 2014, U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 14/500,309, filed Sep. 29, 30 2014, and U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 14/448,308, filed Jul. 31, 2014, which are herebyincorporated by reference herein in their entireties. Knowledge graph400 provides information about a multitude of entities and theirrelationships with other entities and may be derived from a corpus froma wide variety of sources. Knowledge graph 400 is composed of nodes andedges which represent information about relationships between differententities. Although the depicted knowledge graph 400 comprises nodes andedges, it is only an illustrative embodiment. Knowledge graph 400 cancomprise of another suitable modes of representation of relationshipsbetween different entities without departing from the scope of thisinvention. For example, knowledge graph 400 may include databases,lists, and collections that represent objects and their associatedrelationships.

Knowledge graph 400 may be stored using storage circuitry 808. Datastructures such as linked lists, trees, graphs, buckets or arrays may beused to represent knowledge graph 400 in storage circuitry 808.Knowledge graph 400 may be stored locally on user equipment device 800or stored remotely and accessed through communications network 914.Knowledge graph 400 may be stored entirely in one location, or be splitinto sections and each section stored at one of a plurality oflocations. In some embodiments, knowledge graph 400 may be generateddynamically upon request using content from of media content source 916and media guidance data source 918.

Knowledge graph 400 is an example of the first knowledge graphassociated with the first context term “Bernie Sanders” 104 accessed bythe interactive media guidance application. Knowledge graph 400 includesnode “Bernie Sanders” 402 which corresponds to the first context term“Bernie Sanders” 104. Knowledge graph 400 also includes node “HillaryClinton” 404, node “Bill Clinton” 406, node “Ryan Clinton” 408, node“Vermont” 410, node “Senator” 412 and node “Income inequality” 414. Theinteractive media guidance application may identify, in knowledge graph400, a potential term that could be the meaning of the unknown termbased on similarity between the potential term and the unknown term. Theinteractive media guidance application may identify node “Bill Clinton”406, node “Hillary Clinton” 404 and node “Ryan Clinton” 408 as potentialterms because of their similarity to the first unknown term “Clinton”106.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance application may usestrength of association between a term and the first context term as asecond step to filter out the most likely potential terms. Strength ofassociation may be an inverse of the normalized distance of the edgebetween two terms in the knowledge graph 400. For example, normalizedstrength of association between node “Bernie Sanders” 402 and each ofnode “Bill Clinton” 406, node “Hillary Clinton” 404 and node “RyanClinton” 408 is 0.7, 0.7 and 0.2 respectively. If required thresholdstrength of association is 0.5, then the interactive media guidanceapplication may determine, based on the knowledge graph 400, that node“Bill Clinton” 406 and node “Hillary Clinton” 404 are potential termsthat could be the meaning of the first unknown term “Clinton” 106.

The interactive media guidance application determines whether the firstknowledge graph includes more than one potential term that could be themeaning of the first unknown term. For example, the interactive mediaguidance application may use a Boolean comparison function to determinewhether the value of a counter corresponding to the number of potentialterms in knowledge graph 400 is greater than one. Upon determining thatknowledge graph 400 includes more than one potential term that could bethe meaning of the first unknown term, the interactive media guidanceapplication determines a time stamp associated with the text segment.The time stamp can be any period of time, depending on the origin andcontent of the text segment. For example, if the text segment is areport detailing changes in campaign donation policies during 2010 to2016, the time stamp may be 2010 to 2016. For a social media statusupdate (e.g., a Twitter post) or a natural language query, the timestamp may be the exact date and time of the update or query. The timestamp is used to derive information about the time that the content ofthe text segment relates to.

The interactive media guidance application may use metadata associatedwith the text segment to determine the time stamp. The interactive mediaguidance application may retrieve metadata associated with the textsegment by querying a database (e.g., database located at media contentsource 916 or media guidance data source 918) for the metadatacorresponding to the text segment. Alternatively, the interactive mediaguidance application may use text mining techniques to extract timeindicators from the text segment itself. For example, the text segmentmay contain dates of events detailed in the text segment (e.g., “On Jan.11, 2016, Bernie Sanders called out Clinton . . . ”) or other contextualinformation that may be used to extrapolate the time stamp (e.g.,“Speaking to his supporters on the coldest winter day recorded in 30years, Bernie Sanders called out Clinton . . . ”). In this case, theinteractive media guidance application may determine that the time stampassociated with the text segment 102 to be “Jan. 11, 2016” 108.

The interactive media guidance application determines the meaning of thefirst unknown term by accessing a second knowledge graph associated withthe first context term and related to the time stamp to determine thepotential term that is the meaning of the first unknown term.Association between entities changes over time. The second knowledgegraph, because it is associated with a specific time related to the timestamp rather than all time periods, captures the temporal dimension ofassociations between entities. For example, if news that school boy“Ryan Clinton” donated his lunch money to the Bernie Sanders campaignwas trending during one specific week, the association between the terms“Bernie Sanders” and “Ryan Clinton” would be strong in a knowledge graphderived solely from a corpus associated with that specific week andnon-existent in a knowledge graph derived solely from a corpusassociated other weeks. In a knowledge graph derived from a corpus overall periods of time however, there will be a weak association betweenthe two terms because they shared a strong association at one point intime.

The interactive media guidance application, by accessing the secondknowledge graph related to the time stamp, is able to determineassociations that were most important during a time period relevant tothe text segment. For example, the second knowledge graph associatedwith the first context term “Bernie Sanders” 104 and related to the timestamp “Jan. 11, 2016” 108 may be a knowledge graph capturing informationfrom news articles, social media and other corpora during the weekleading up to Jan. 11, 2016. An example of the second knowledge graph isknowledge graph 500 depicted in FIG. 5.

FIG. 5 shows another illustrative embodiment of portion of a knowledgegraph associated with the first context term in a text segment, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. Knowledge graph 500provides information about a multitude of entities and theirrelationships with other entities during a time related to the timestamp “Jan. 11, 2016” 108. The depicted knowledge graph 500 is only anillustrative embodiment and knowledge graph 500 can comprise anothersuitable modes of representation of relationships between differententities without departing from the scope of this invention.

Knowledge graph 500 may be stored using storage circuitry 808. Datastructures such as linked lists, trees, graphs, buckets or arrays may beused to represent knowledge graph 500 in storage circuitry 808.Knowledge graph 500 may be stored locally on user equipment device 800or stored remotely and accessed through communications network 914.Knowledge graph 500 may be stored entirely in one location, or be splitinto sections and each section stored at one of a plurality oflocations. In some embodiments, knowledge graph 500 may be generateddynamically upon request using content from media content source 916 andmedia guidance data source 918.

Knowledge graph 500 associated with specific time interval “week leadingup to Jan. 11, 2016” 504 includes node “Bernie Sanders” 508 whichcorresponds to the first context term “Bernie Sanders” 104. Knowledgegraph 500 also includes node “Income inequality” 506, node “Vermont” 512and node “Hillary Clinton” 510. The interactive media guidanceapplication may identify node “Hillary Clinton” 510 as the meaning ofthe first unknown term, using techniques discussed previously.

In some embodiments, the second knowledge graph is associated with aspecific time interval whose position is determined based on the timestamp of the text segment. For example, the specific time interval maybe a week. The specific time interval may be a default time interval. Byusing a specific time interval, the interactive media guidanceapplication is able to limit the amount of corpus that the knowledgegraph 500 is derived from, facilitating the identification of trendingassociations. The position is the specific time interval is determinedbased on the time stamp 108 to ensure that the second knowledge graph,knowledge graph 500, is derived from the corpus most likely to helpdisambiguate ambiguous terms in the text segment 102. For example, basedon “Jan. 11, 2016” time stamp 108, the interactive media guidanceapplication may determine the position of the week is to be the weekleading up to Jan. 11, 2016. In this case, the interactive mediaguidance application would access the second knowledge graph, knowledgegraph 500, derived from a corpus from the week of Jan. 5-11, 2016.

In some embodiments, the duration of the specific time intervalassociated with the second knowledge graph is shorter than the durationof time interval associated with the first knowledge graph. For example,the first knowledge graph, knowledge graph 400, may be a staticknowledge graph derived from a corpus spanning years. The secondknowledge graph (knowledge graph 500), on the other hand, may be atemporal knowledge graph derived from a corpus associated with a certainday.

In some embodiments, the position of the specific time intervalassociated with the second knowledge graph is such that the specifictime interval associated with the second knowledge graph overlaps withthe time stamp. The overlap between the specific time interval and thetime stamp may be partial or complete. For example, the time stamp 108may be Jan. 11, 2016 and the specific time interval may be Jan. 7-14,2016. As another example, the time stamp may be Jan. 11-Mar. 11, 2016and the specific time interval may be Jan. 1-31, 2016. In someembodiments, the position of the specific time interval associated withthe second knowledge graph is such that the specific time intervalassociated with the second knowledge graph precedes the time stamp ofthe text segment. For example, the text segment containing the ambiguousterm may be a natural language query about a past event, received onJan. 11, 2016. In this case, the specific time interval associated withthe second knowledge graph may be Jan. 3-6, 2016. In some embodiments,the position of the specific time interval associated with the secondknowledge graph is such that the specific time interval associated withthe second knowledge graph follows the time stamp of the text segment.For example, the text segment 102 containing the ambiguous term may be asocial media post at 3:33 pm, Jan. 11, 2016. The interactive mediaguidance application may determine that social media posts written inresponse to the original social media post would be the best corpus toderive the second knowledge graph (knowledge graph 500) from.Accordingly, the specific time interval associated with the secondknowledge graph may be 3:34 pm-6:00 pm, Jan. 11, 2016.

In some embodiments, duration of the specific time interval is based inpart on time indicators identified by analyzing the text segment. Forexample, the interactive media guidance application may use text miningtechniques to identify time indicators (e.g., today, during the week of,all of last month, during the past two years and other suitable timeindicators) that may be present in a text segment and that may beassociated with the ambiguous term. For example, the interactive mediaguidance application may analyze the natural language query “What didClinton say to Bernie Sanders at the fund raiser today?” and determine“today” is a time indicator associated with the ambiguous term“Clinton.” The interactive media guidance application may determine,based on the time indicator “today” that the duration of the specifictime interval should be a day.

In some embodiments, duration of the specific time interval is based inpart on the source of the text segment. For example, the interactivemedia guidance application may determine the source of the text segment102 is a daily newspaper (e.g., the New York Times). In this case, theinteractive media guidance application may set the duration of thespecific time interval to be a week as the daily newspaper is mostlikely to refer to events that happened during the past few days. If theinteractive media guidance application determines that the source of thetext segment 102 is a microblog platform (e.g., Twitter) where topicsbeing discussed change more frequently, the interactive media guidanceapplication may set the duration of the specific time interval to be aday. For natural language queries received from a user, the interactivemedia guidance application may identify the user (e.g., based on aunique identifier associated with the user such as a string ofcharacters or bio-metric data). The interactive media guidanceapplication may then use information associated with the user (e.g.,query history associated with the user profile, media consumptionpatterns and other such information retrieved from storage 808) todetermine the duration of the specific time interval. For example, theinteractive media guidance application may determine that a query isreceived from user Tommy. The interactive media guidance application maydetermine from Tommy's user profile that he predominantly reads dailynewspapers and has frequent queries related to events in thesenewspapers. In this case, the interactive media guidance application maydetermine that an ambiguous term in Tommy's query is most likely torefer to recent events and set the specific time interval to be a week.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance applicationdetermines that the first knowledge graph does not include any potentialterm that could be the meaning of the first unknown term. For example,for the text segment “Megan Kelly, Bernie Sanders and Clinton were allat the debate,” the interactive media guidance application may identify“Clinton” as the unknown term and “Megan Kelly” as the first contextterm. The interactive media guidance application may access the firstknowledge graph associated with the first context term “Megan Kelly” todetermine that there is a no potential term in the first knowledge graphthat could be the meaning of the unknown term “Clinton.” The interactivemedia guidance application may then identify a second context term inthe text segment. For example, the interactive media guidanceapplication may identify “Bernie Sanders” as the second context term.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance applicationdetermines the meaning of the first unknown term based on the secondcontext term. In this case, the interactive media guidance applicationmay determine the meaning of the first unknown term “Clinton” based onthe second context term “Bernie Sanders” by accessing a knowledge graphassociated with Bernie Sanders. Upon determining the term “Clinton” isambiguous, the interactive media guidance application may access anotherknowledge graph associated with the term “Bernie Sanders” and related tothe stamp associated with the time stamp of the text segment todetermine the meaning of the term “Clinton.”

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance application maydetermine that the second knowledge graph includes more than onepotential term that could be the meaning of the first unknown term. Forexample, for the text segment “Bernie Sanders has just called outClinton for soliciting donations from banks and corporations,” theinteractive media guidance application may determine that the secondknowledge graph contains the terms “Hillary Clinton” and “Bill Clinton,”both of which could be the meaning of the first unknown term. In someembodiments, the interactive media guidance application may adjust atleast one of duration of the specific time interval and the position ofthe specific time interval. The interactive media guidance applicationmay change (i.e., increase or decrease) the duration of the specifictime interval while keeping the position constant. Alternatively, theinteractive media guidance application may keep the duration of thespecific time interval constant while changing the position of thespecific time interval. In some embodiments, the interactive mediaguidance application may change both the duration and position of thespecific time interval.

For example, the time stamp of the text segment may have been Jan. 11,2016, the duration of the specific time interval may have been one weekand the position of the specific time interval may have been such thatits end point coincided with the time stamp. In this case, the secondknowledge graph would be derived from a corpus from Jan. 5-11, 2016.Because this second knowledge graph includes more than one potentialterm that could be the meaning of the first unknown term “Clinton,” theinteractive media guidance application may decrease the duration of thespecific time interval to be three days so that the specific timeinterval now ranges from Jan. 9-11, 2016 (e.g., to limit the amount ofextraneous corpus). Alternatively, the interactive media guidanceapplication may keep the duration of the specific time interval constantat seven days and change the position so that the starting point of thespecific time interval coincides with the time stamp (i.e. the specifictime interval is now Jan. 11-17, 2016).

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance application maydetermine the meaning of the first unknown term by accessing a thirdknowledge graph associated with the first context term and the specifictime interval to determine the potential term that is the meaning of thefirst unknown term. For example, the interactive media guidanceapplication may access a third knowledge graph associated with theadjusted specific time interval Jan. 9-11, 2016 to determine thepotential term that is the meaning of the first unknown term “Clinton.”Techniques by which the interactive media guidance application maydetermine from the third knowledge graph the potential term that is themeaning of the first unknown term discussed previously are applicablehere.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance applicationdetermines that the second knowledge graph does not include anypotential term that could be the meaning of the first unknown term. Forexample, the interactive media guidance application may determine thatthere is no term that is similar to the unknown term “Clinton” in thesecond knowledge graph. The interactive media guidance application mayadjust at least one of duration of the specific time interval and theposition of the specific time interval. From the previous example, thespecific time interval may be Jan. 5-11, 2016. The interactive mediaguidance application may increase the duration of the specific timeinterval to two weeks to incorporate more corpus. In this case, thespecific time interval now ranges from Dec. 29, 2015-Jan. 11, 2016.

In some embodiments, the interactive media guidance application maydetermine the meaning of the first unknown term by accessing a fourthknowledge graph associated with the first context term and the specifictime interval to determine the potential term that is the meaning of thefirst unknown term. For example, the interactive media guidanceapplication may access a fourth knowledge graph associated with theadjusted specific time interval Dec. 29, 2015-Jan. 11, 2016 to determinethe potential term that is the meaning of the first unknown term“Clinton.”

The amount of content available to users in any given content deliverysystem can be substantial. Consequently, many users desire a form ofmedia guidance through an interface that allows users to efficientlynavigate content selections and easily identify content that they maydesire. An application that provides such guidance is referred to hereinas an interactive media guidance application or, sometimes, a mediaguidance application or a guidance application.

Interactive media guidance applications may take various forms dependingon the content for which they provide guidance. One typical type ofmedia guidance application is an interactive television program guide.Interactive television program guides (sometimes referred to aselectronic program guides) are well-known guidance applications that,among other things, allow users to navigate among and locate many typesof content or media assets. Interactive media guidance applications maygenerate graphical user interface screens that enable a user to navigateamong, locate and select content. As referred to herein, the terms“media asset” and “content” should be understood to mean anelectronically consumable user asset, such as television programming, aswell as pay-per-view programs, on-demand programs (as in video-on-demand(VOD) systems), Internet content (e.g., streaming content, downloadablecontent, Webcasts, etc.), video clips, audio, content information,pictures, rotating images, documents, playlists, websites, articles,books, electronic books, blogs, advertisements, chat sessions, socialmedia, applications, games, and/or any other media or multimedia and/orcombination of the same. Guidance applications also allow users tonavigate among and locate content. As referred to herein, the term“multimedia” should be understood to mean content that utilizes at leasttwo different content forms described above, for example, text, audio,images, video, or interactivity content forms. Content may be recorded,played, displayed or accessed by user equipment devices, but can also bepart of a live performance.

The media guidance application and/or any instructions for performingany of the embodiments discussed herein may be encoded on computerreadable media. Computer readable media includes any media capable ofstoring data. The computer readable media may be transitory, including,but not limited to, propagating electrical or electromagnetic signals,or may be non-transitory including, but not limited to, volatile andnon-volatile computer memory or storage devices such as a hard disk,floppy disk, USB drive, DVD, CD, media cards, register memory, processorcaches, Random Access Memory (“RAM”), etc.

With the advent of the Internet, mobile computing, and high-speedwireless networks, users are accessing media on user equipment deviceson which they traditionally did not. As referred to herein, the phrase“user equipment device,” “user equipment,” “user device,” “electronicdevice,” “electronic equipment,” “media equipment device,” or “mediadevice” should be understood to mean any device for accessing thecontent described above, such as a television, a Smart TV, a set-topbox, an integrated receiver decoder (IRD) for handling satellitetelevision, a digital storage device, a digital media receiver (DMR), adigital media adapter (DMA), a streaming media device, a DVD player, aDVD recorder, a connected DVD, a local media server, a BLU-RAY player, aBLU-RAY recorder, a personal computer (PC), a laptop computer, a tabletcomputer, a WebTV box, a personal computer television (PC/TV), a PCmedia server, a PC media center, a hand-held computer, a stationarytelephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobile telephone, aportable video player, a portable music player, a portable gamingmachine, a smart phone, or any other television equipment, computingequipment, or wireless device, and/or combination of the same. In someembodiments, the user equipment device may have a front facing screenand a rear facing screen, multiple front screens, or multiple angledscreens. In some embodiments, the user equipment device may have a frontfacing camera and/or a rear facing camera. On these user equipmentdevices, users may be able to navigate among and locate the same contentavailable through a television. Consequently, media guidance may beavailable on these devices, as well. The guidance provided may be forcontent available only through a television, for content available onlythrough one or more of other types of user equipment devices, or forcontent available both through a television and one or more of the othertypes of user equipment devices. The media guidance applications may beprovided as on-line applications (i.e., provided on a web-site), or asstand-alone applications or clients on user equipment devices. Variousdevices and platforms that may implement media guidance applications aredescribed in more detail below.

One of the functions of the media guidance application is to providemedia guidance data to users. As referred to herein, the phrase “mediaguidance data” or “guidance data” should be understood to mean any datarelated to content or data used in operating the guidance application.For example, the guidance data may include program information, guidanceapplication settings, user preferences, user profile information, medialistings, media-related information (e.g., broadcast times, broadcastchannels, titles, descriptions, ratings information (e.g., parentalcontrol ratings, critic's ratings, etc.), genre or category information,actor information, logo data for broadcasters' or providers' logos,etc.), media format (e.g., standard definition, high definition, 3D,etc.), advertisement information (e.g., text, images, media clips,etc.), on-demand information, blogs, websites, and any other type ofguidance data that is helpful for a user to navigate among and locatedesired content selections.

FIGS. 6-7 show illustrative display screens that may be used to providemedia guidance data. The display screens shown in FIGS. 6-7 may beimplemented on any suitable user equipment device or platform. While thedisplays of FIGS. 6-7 are illustrated as full screen displays, they mayalso be fully or partially overlaid over content being displayed. A usermay indicate a desire to access content information by selecting aselectable option provided in a display screen (e.g., a menu option, alistings option, an icon, a hyperlink, etc.) or pressing a dedicatedbutton (e.g., a GUIDE button) on a remote control or other user inputinterface or device. In response to the user's indication, the mediaguidance application may provide a display screen with media guidancedata organized in one of several ways, such as by time and channel in agrid, by time, by channel, by source, by content type, by category(e.g., movies, sports, news, children, or other categories ofprogramming), or other predefined, user-defined, or other organizationcriteria.

FIG. 6 shows illustrative grid of a program listings display 600arranged by time and channel that also enables access to different typesof content in a single display. Display 600 may include grid 602 with:(1) a column of channel/content type identifiers 604, where eachchannel/content type identifier (which is a cell in the column)identifies a different channel or content type available; and (2) a rowof time identifiers 606, where each time identifier (which is a cell inthe row) identifies a time block of programming. Grid 602 also includescells of program listings, such as program listing 608, where eachlisting provides the title of the program provided on the listing'sassociated channel and time. With a user input device, a user can selectprogram listings by moving highlight region 610. Information relating tothe program listing selected by highlight region 610 may be provided inprogram information region 612. Region 612 may include, for example, theprogram title, the program description, the time the program is provided(if applicable), the channel the program is on (if applicable), theprogram's rating, and other desired information.

In addition to providing access to linear programming (e.g., contentthat is scheduled to be transmitted to a plurality of user equipmentdevices at a predetermined time and is provided according to aschedule), the media guidance application also provides access tonon-linear programming (e.g., content accessible to a user equipmentdevice at any time and is not provided according to a schedule).Non-linear programming may include content from different contentsources including on-demand content (e.g., VOD), Internet content (e.g.,streaming media, downloadable media, etc.), locally stored content(e.g., content stored on any user equipment device described above orother storage device), or other time-independent content. On-demandcontent may include movies or any other content provided by a particularcontent provider (e.g., HBO On Demand providing “The Sopranos” and “CurbYour Enthusiasm”). HBO ON DEMAND is a service mark owned by Time WarnerCompany L.P. et al. and THE SOPRANOS and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM aretrademarks owned by the Home Box Office, Inc. Internet content mayinclude web events, such as a chat session or Webcast, or contentavailable on-demand as streaming content or downloadable content throughan Internet web site or other Internet access (e.g. FTP).

Grid 602 may provide media guidance data for non-linear programmingincluding on-demand listing 614, recorded content listing 616, andInternet content listing 618. A display combining media guidance datafor content from different types of content sources is sometimesreferred to as a “mixed-media” display. Various permutations of thetypes of media guidance data that may be displayed that are differentthan display 600 may be based on user selection or guidance applicationdefinition (e.g., a display of only recorded and broadcast listings,only on-demand and broadcast listings, etc.). As illustrated, listings614, 616, and 618 are shown as spanning the entire time block displayedin grid 602 to indicate that selection of these listings may provideaccess to a display dedicated to on-demand listings, recorded listings,or Internet listings, respectively. In some embodiments, listings forthese content types may be included directly in grid 602. Additionalmedia guidance data may be displayed in response to the user selectingone of the navigational icons 620. (Pressing an arrow key on a userinput device may affect the display in a similar manner as selectingnavigational icons 620.)

Display 600 may also include video region 622, advertisement 624, andoptions region 626. Video region 622 may allow the user to view and/orpreview programs that are currently available, will be available, orwere available to the user. The content of video region 622 maycorrespond to, or be independent from, one of the listings displayed ingrid 602. Grid displays including a video region are sometimes referredto as picture-in-guide (PIG) displays. PIG displays and theirfunctionalities are described in greater detail in Satterfield et al.U.S. Pat. No. 6,564,378, issued May 13, 2003 and Yuen et al. U.S. Pat.No. 6,239,794, issued May 29, 2001, which are hereby incorporated byreference herein in their entireties. PIG displays may be included inother media guidance application display screens of the embodimentsdescribed herein.

Advertisement 624 may provide an advertisement for content that,depending on a viewer's access rights (e.g., for subscriptionprogramming), is currently available for viewing, will be available forviewing in the future, or may never become available for viewing, andmay correspond to or be unrelated to one or more of the content listingsin grid 602. Advertisement 624 may also be for products or servicesrelated or unrelated to the content displayed in grid 602. Advertisement624 may be selectable and provide further information about content,provide information about a product or a service, enable purchasing ofcontent, a product, or a service, provide content relating to theadvertisement, etc. Advertisement 624 may be targeted based on a user'sprofile/preferences, monitored user activity, the type of displayprovided, or on other suitable targeted advertisement bases.

While advertisement 624 is shown as rectangular or banner shaped,advertisements may be provided in any suitable size, shape, and locationin a guidance application display. For example, advertisement 624 may beprovided as a rectangular shape that is horizontally adjacent to grid602. This is sometimes referred to as a panel advertisement. Inaddition, advertisements may be overlaid over content or a guidanceapplication display or embedded within a display. Advertisements mayalso include text, images, rotating images, video clips, or other typesof content described above. Advertisements may be stored in a userequipment device having a guidance application, in a database connectedto the user equipment, in a remote location (including streaming mediaservers), or on other storage means, or a combination of theselocations. Providing advertisements in a media guidance application isdiscussed in greater detail in, for example, Knudson et al., U.S. PatentApplication Publication No. 2003/0110499, filed Jan. 17, 2003; Ward, IIIet al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,756,997, issued Jun. 29, 2004; and Schein et al.U.S. Pat. No. 6,388,714, issued May 14, 2002, which are herebyincorporated by reference herein in their entireties. It will beappreciated that advertisements may be included in other media guidanceapplication display screens of the embodiments described herein.

Options region 626 may allow the user to access different types ofcontent, media guidance application displays, and/or media guidanceapplication features. Options region 626 may be part of display 600 (andother display screens described herein), or may be invoked by a user byselecting an on-screen option or pressing a dedicated or assignablebutton on a user input device. The selectable options within optionsregion 626 may concern features related to program listings in grid 602or may include options available from a main menu display. Featuresrelated to program listings may include searching for other air times orways of receiving a program, recording a program, enabling seriesrecording of a program, setting program and/or channel as a favorite,purchasing a program, or other features. Options available from a mainmenu display may include search options, VOD options, parental controloptions, Internet options, cloud-based options, device synchronizationoptions, second screen device options, options to access various typesof media guidance data displays, options to subscribe to a premiumservice, options to edit a user's profile, options to access a browseoverlay, or other options.

The media guidance application may be personalized based on a user'spreferences. A personalized media guidance application allows a user tocustomize displays and features to create a personalized “experience”with the media guidance application. This personalized experience may becreated by allowing a user to input these customizations and/or by themedia guidance application monitoring user activity to determine varioususer preferences. Users may access their personalized guidanceapplication by logging in or otherwise identifying themselves to theguidance application. Customization of the media guidance applicationmay be made in accordance with a user profile. The customizations mayinclude varying presentation schemes (e.g., color scheme of displays,font size of text, etc.), aspects of content listings displayed (e.g.,only HDTV or only 3D programming, user-specified broadcast channelsbased on favorite channel selections, re-ordering the display ofchannels, recommended content, etc.), desired recording features (e.g.,recording or series recordings for particular users, recording quality,etc.), parental control settings, customized presentation of Internetcontent (e.g., presentation of social media content, e-mail,electronically delivered articles, etc.) and other desiredcustomizations.

The media guidance application may allow a user to provide user profileinformation or may automatically compile user profile information. Themedia guidance application may, for example, monitor the content theuser accesses and/or other interactions the user may have with theguidance application. Additionally, the media guidance application mayobtain all or part of other user profiles that are related to aparticular user (e.g., from other web sites on the Internet the useraccesses, such as www.allrovi.com, from other media guidanceapplications the user accesses, from other interactive applications theuser accesses, from another user equipment device of the user, etc.),and/or obtain information about the user from other sources that themedia guidance application may access. As a result, a user can beprovided with a unified guidance application experience across theuser's different user equipment devices. This type of user experience isdescribed in greater detail below in connection with FIG. 9. Additionalpersonalized media guidance application features are described ingreater detail in Ellis et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No.2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11, 2005, Boyer et al., U.S. Pat. No.7,165,098, issued Jan. 16, 2007, and Ellis et al., U.S. PatentApplication Publication No. 2002/0174430, filed Feb. 21, 2002, which arehereby incorporated by reference herein in their entireties.

Another display arrangement for providing media guidance is shown inFIG. 7. Video mosaic display 700 includes selectable options 702 forcontent information organized based on content type, genre, and/or otherorganization criteria. In display 700, television listings option 704 isselected, thus providing listings 706, 708, 710, and 712 as broadcastprogram listings. In display 700 the listings may provide graphicalimages including cover art, still images from the content, video clippreviews, live video from the content, or other types of content thatindicate to a user the content being described by the media guidancedata in the listing. Each of the graphical listings may also beaccompanied by text to provide further information about the contentassociated with the listing. For example, listing 708 may include morethan one portion, including media portion 714 and text portion 716.Media portion 714 and/or text portion 716 may be selectable to viewcontent in full-screen or to view information related to the contentdisplayed in media portion 714 (e.g., to view listings for the channelthat the video is displayed on).

The listings in display 700 are of different sizes (i.e., listing 706 islarger than listings 708, 710, and 712), but if desired, all thelistings may be the same size. Listings may be of different sizes orgraphically accentuated to indicate degrees of interest to the user orto emphasize certain content, as desired by the content provider orbased on user preferences. Various systems and methods for graphicallyaccentuating content listings are discussed in, for example, Yates, U.S.Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0153885, filed Nov. 12, 2009,which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

Users may access content and the media guidance application (and itsdisplay screens described above and below) from one or more of theiruser equipment devices. FIG. 8 shows a generalized embodiment ofillustrative user equipment device 800. More specific implementations ofuser equipment devices are discussed below in connection with FIG. 9.User equipment device 800 may receive content and data via input/output(hereinafter “I/O”) path 802. I/O path 802 may provide content (e.g.,broadcast programming, on-demand programming, Internet content, contentavailable over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN),and/or other content) and data to control circuitry 804, which includesprocessing circuitry 806 and storage 808. Control circuitry 804 may beused to send and receive commands, requests, and other suitable datausing I/O path 802. I/O path 802 may connect control circuitry 804 (andspecifically processing circuitry 806) to one or more communicationspaths (described below). I/O functions may be provided by one or more ofthese communications paths, but are shown as a single path in FIG. 8 toavoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Control circuitry 804 may be based on any suitable processing circuitrysuch as processing circuitry 806. As referred to herein, processingcircuitry should be understood to mean circuitry based on one or moremicroprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors,programmable logic devices, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), etc., and may includea multi-core processor (e.g., dual-core, quad-core, hexa-core, or anysuitable number of cores) or supercomputer. In some embodiments,processing circuitry may be distributed across multiple separateprocessors or processing units, for example, multiple of the same typeof processing units (e.g., two Intel Core i7 processors) or multipledifferent processors (e.g., an Intel Core i5 processor and an Intel Corei7 processor). In some embodiments, control circuitry 804 executesinstructions for a media guidance application stored in memory (i.e.,storage 808). Specifically, control circuitry 804 may be instructed bythe media guidance application to perform the functions discussed aboveand below. For example, the media guidance application may provideinstructions to control circuitry 804 to generate the media guidancedisplays. In some implementations, any action performed by controlcircuitry 804 may be based on instructions received from the mediaguidance application.

In client-server based embodiments, control circuitry 804 may includecommunications circuitry suitable for communicating with a guidanceapplication server or other networks or servers. The instructions forcarrying out the above mentioned functionality may be stored on theguidance application server. Communications circuitry may include acable modem, an integrated services digital network (ISDN) modem, adigital subscriber line (DSL) modem, a telephone modem, Ethernet card,or a wireless modem for communications with other equipment, or anyother suitable communications circuitry. Such communications may involvethe Internet or any other suitable communications networks or paths(which is described in more detail in connection with FIG. 9). Inaddition, communications circuitry may include circuitry that enablespeer-to-peer communication of user equipment devices, or communicationof user equipment devices in locations remote from each other (describedin more detail below).

Memory may be an electronic storage device provided as storage 808 thatis part of control circuitry 804. As referred to herein, the phrase“electronic storage device” or “storage device” should be understood tomean any device for storing electronic data, computer software, orfirmware, such as random-access memory, read-only memory, hard drives,optical drives, digital video disc (DVD) recorders, compact disc (CD)recorders, BLU-RAY disc (BD) recorders, BLU-RAY 3D disc recorders,digital video recorders (DVR, sometimes called a personal videorecorder, or PVR), solid state devices, quantum storage devices, gamingconsoles, gaming media, or any other suitable fixed or removable storagedevices, and/or any combination of the same. Storage 808 may be used tostore various types of content described herein as well as mediaguidance data described above. Nonvolatile memory may also be used(e.g., to launch a boot-up routine and other instructions). Cloud-basedstorage, described in relation to FIG. 9, may be used to supplementstorage 808 or instead of storage 808.

Control circuitry 804 may include video generating circuitry and tuningcircuitry, such as one or more analog tuners, one or more MPEG-2decoders or other digital decoding circuitry, high-definition tuners, orany other suitable tuning or video circuits or combinations of suchcircuits. Encoding circuitry (e.g., for converting over-the-air, analog,or digital signals to MPEG signals for storage) may also be provided.Control circuitry 804 may also include scaler circuitry for upconvertingand downconverting content into the preferred output format of the userequipment 800. Circuitry 804 may also include digital-to-analogconverter circuitry and analog-to-digital converter circuitry forconverting between digital and analog signals. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may be used by the user equipment device to receive and todisplay, to play, or to record content. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may also be used to receive guidance data. The circuitrydescribed herein, including for example, the tuning, video generating,encoding, decoding, encrypting, decrypting, scaler, and analog/digitalcircuitry, may be implemented using software running on one or moregeneral purpose or specialized processors. Multiple tuners may beprovided to handle simultaneous tuning functions (e.g., watch and recordfunctions, picture-in-picture (PIP) functions, multiple-tuner recording,etc.). If storage 808 is provided as a separate device from userequipment 800, the tuning and encoding circuitry (including multipletuners) may be associated with storage 808.

A user may send instructions to control circuitry 804 using user inputinterface 810. User input interface 810 may be any suitable userinterface, such as a remote control, mouse, trackball, keypad, keyboard,touch screen, touchpad, stylus input, joystick, voice recognitioninterface, or other user input interfaces. Display 812 may be providedas a stand-alone device or integrated with other elements of userequipment device 800. For example, display 812 may be a touchscreen ortouch-sensitive display. In such circumstances, user input interface 810may be integrated with or combined with display 812. Display 812 may beone or more of a monitor, a television, a liquid crystal display (LCD)for a mobile device, amorphous silicon display, low temperature polysilicon display, electronic ink display, electrophoretic display, activematrix display, electro-wetting display, electrofluidic display, cathoderay tube display, light-emitting diode display, electroluminescentdisplay, plasma display panel, high-performance addressing display,thin-film transistor display, organic light-emitting diode display,surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED), laser television,carbon nanotubes, quantum dot display, interferometric modulatordisplay, or any other suitable equipment for displaying visual images.In some embodiments, display 812 may be HDTV-capable. In someembodiments, display 812 may be a 3D display, and the interactive mediaguidance application and any suitable content may be displayed in 3D. Avideo card or graphics card may generate the output to the display 812.The video card may offer various functions such as accelerated renderingof 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or theability to connect multiple monitors. The video card may be anyprocessing circuitry described above in relation to control circuitry804. The video card may be integrated with the control circuitry 804.Speakers 814 may be provided as integrated with other elements of userequipment device 800 or may be stand-alone units. The audio component ofvideos and other content displayed on display 812 may be played throughspeakers 814. In some embodiments, the audio may be distributed to areceiver (not shown), which processes and outputs the audio via speakers814.

The guidance application may be implemented using any suitablearchitecture. For example, it may be a stand-alone applicationwholly-implemented on user equipment device 800. In such an approach,instructions of the application are stored locally (e.g., in storage808), and data for use by the application is downloaded on a periodicbasis (e.g., from an out-of-band feed, from an Internet resource, orusing another suitable approach). Control circuitry 804 may retrieveinstructions of the application from storage 808 and process theinstructions to generate any of the displays discussed herein. Based onthe processed instructions, control circuitry 804 may determine whataction to perform when input is received from input interface 810. Forexample, movement of a cursor on a display up/down may be indicated bythe processed instructions when input interface 810 indicates that anup/down button was selected.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is a client-serverbased application. Data for use by a thick or thin client implemented onuser equipment device 800 is retrieved on-demand by issuing requests toa server remote to the user equipment device 800. In one example of aclient-server based guidance application, control circuitry 804 runs aweb browser that interprets web pages provided by a remote server. Forexample, the remote server may store the instructions for theapplication in a storage device. The remote server may process thestored instructions using circuitry (e.g., control circuitry 804) andgenerate the displays discussed above and below. The client device mayreceive the displays generated by the remote server and may display thecontent of the displays locally on equipment device 800. This way, theprocessing of the instructions is performed remotely by the server whilethe resulting displays are provided locally on equipment device 800.Equipment device 800 may receive inputs from the user via inputinterface 810 and transmit those inputs to the remote server forprocessing and generating the corresponding displays. For example,equipment device 800 may transmit a communication to the remote serverindicating that an up/down button was selected via input interface 810.The remote server may process instructions in accordance with that inputand generate a display of the application corresponding to the input(e.g., a display that moves a cursor up/down). The generated display isthen transmitted to equipment device 800 for presentation to the user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is downloaded andinterpreted or otherwise run by an interpreter or virtual machine (runby control circuitry 804). In some embodiments, the guidance applicationmay be encoded in the ETV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF), received bycontrol circuitry 804 as part of a suitable feed, and interpreted by auser agent running on control circuitry 804. For example, the guidanceapplication may be an EBIF application. In some embodiments, theguidance application may be defined by a series of JAVA-based files thatare received and run by a local virtual machine or other suitablemiddleware executed by control circuitry 804. In some of suchembodiments (e.g., those employing MPEG-2 or other digital mediaencoding schemes), the guidance application may be, for example, encodedand transmitted in an MPEG-2 object carousel with the MPEG audio andvideo packets of a program.

User equipment device 800 of FIG. 8 can be implemented in system 900 ofFIG. 9 as user television equipment 902, user computer equipment 904,wireless user communications device 906, or any other type of userequipment suitable for accessing content, such as a non-portable gamingmachine. For simplicity, these devices may be referred to hereincollectively as user equipment or user equipment devices, and may besubstantially similar to user equipment devices described above. Userequipment devices, on which a media guidance application may beimplemented, may function as a standalone device or may be part of anetwork of devices. Various network configurations of devices may beimplemented and are discussed in more detail below.

A user equipment device utilizing at least some of the system featuresdescribed above in connection with FIG. 8 may not be classified solelyas user television equipment 902, user computer equipment 904, or awireless user communications device 906. For example, user televisionequipment 902 may, like some user computer equipment 904, beInternet-enabled allowing for access to Internet content, while usercomputer equipment 904 may, like some user television equipment 902,include a tuner allowing for access to television programming. The mediaguidance application may have the same layout on various different typesof user equipment or may be tailored to the display capabilities of theuser equipment. For example, on user computer equipment 904, theguidance application may be provided as a web site accessed by a webbrowser. In another example, the guidance application may be scaled downfor wireless user communications devices 906.

In system 900, there is typically more than one of each type of userequipment device but only one of each is shown in FIG. 9 to avoidovercomplicating the drawing. In addition, each user may utilize morethan one type of user equipment device and also more than one of eachtype of user equipment device.

In some embodiments, a user equipment device (e.g., user televisionequipment 902, user computer equipment 904, wireless user communicationsdevice 906) may be referred to as a “second screen device.” For example,a second screen device may supplement content presented on a first userequipment device. The content presented on the second screen device maybe any suitable content that supplements the content presented on thefirst device. In some embodiments, the second screen device provides aninterface for adjusting settings and display preferences of the firstdevice. In some embodiments, the second screen device is configured forinteracting with other second screen devices or for interacting with asocial network. The second screen device can be located in the same roomas the first device, a different room from the first device but in thesame house or building, or in a different building from the firstdevice.

The user may also set various settings to maintain consistent mediaguidance application settings across in-home devices and remote devices.Settings include those described herein, as well as channel and programfavorites, programming preferences that the guidance applicationutilizes to make programming recommendations, display preferences, andother desirable guidance settings. For example, if a user sets a channelas a favorite on, for example, the web site www.allrovi.com on theirpersonal computer at their office, the same channel would appear as afavorite on the user's in-home devices (e.g., user television equipmentand user computer equipment) as well as the user's mobile devices, ifdesired. Therefore, changes made on one user equipment device can changethe guidance experience on another user equipment device, regardless ofwhether they are the same or a different type of user equipment device.In addition, the changes made may be based on settings input by a user,as well as user activity monitored by the guidance application.

The user equipment devices may be coupled to communications network 914.Namely, user television equipment 902, user computer equipment 904, andwireless user communications device 906 are coupled to communicationsnetwork 914 via communications paths 908, 910, and 912, respectively.Communications network 914 may be one or more networks including theInternet, a mobile phone network, mobile voice or data network (e.g., a4G or LTE network), cable network, public switched telephone network, orother types of communications network or combinations of communicationsnetworks. Paths 908, 910, and 912 may separately or together include oneor more communications paths, such as, a satellite path, a fiber-opticpath, a cable path, a path that supports Internet communications (e.g.,IPTV), free-space connections (e.g., for broadcast or other wirelesssignals), or any other suitable wired or wireless communications path orcombination of such paths. Path 912 is drawn with dotted lines toindicate that in the exemplary embodiment shown in FIG. 9 it is awireless path and paths 908 and 910 are drawn as solid lines to indicatethey are wired paths (although these paths may be wireless paths, ifdesired). Communications with the user equipment devices may be providedby one or more of these communications paths, but are shown as a singlepath in FIG. 9 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Although communications paths are not drawn between user equipmentdevices, these devices may communicate directly with each other viacommunication paths, such as those described above in connection withpaths 908, 910, and 912, as well as other short-range point-to-pointcommunication paths, such as USB cables, IEEE 1394 cables, wirelesspaths (e.g., Bluetooth, infrared, IEEE 802-11x, etc.), or othershort-range communication via wired or wireless paths. BLUETOOTH is acertification mark owned by Bluetooth SIG, INC. The user equipmentdevices may also communicate with each other directly through anindirect path via communications network 914.

System 900 includes content source 916 and media guidance data source918 coupled to communications network 914 via communication paths 920and 922, respectively. Paths 920 and 922 may include any of thecommunication paths described above in connection with paths 908, 910,and 912. Communications with the content source 916 and media guidancedata source 918 may be exchanged over one or more communications paths,but are shown as a single path in FIG. 9 to avoid overcomplicating thedrawing. In addition, there may be more than one of each of contentsource 916 and media guidance data source 918, but only one of each isshown in FIG. 9 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing. (The differenttypes of each of these sources are discussed below.) If desired, contentsource 916 and media guidance data source 918 may be integrated as onesource device. Although communications between sources 916 and 918 withuser equipment devices 902, 904, and 906 are shown as throughcommunications network 914, in some embodiments, sources 916 and 918 maycommunicate directly with user equipment devices 902, 904, and 906 viacommunication paths (not shown) such as those described above inconnection with paths 908, 910, and 912.

Content source 916 may include one or more types of content distributionequipment including a television distribution facility, cable systemheadend, satellite distribution facility, programming sources (e.g.,television broadcasters, such as NBC, ABC, HBO, etc.), intermediatedistribution facilities and/or servers, Internet providers, on-demandmedia servers, and other content providers. NBC is a trademark owned bythe National Broadcasting Company, Inc., ABC is a trademark owned by theAmerican Broadcasting Company, Inc., and HBO is a trademark owned by theHome Box Office, Inc. Content source 916 may be the originator ofcontent (e.g., a television broadcaster, a Webcast provider, etc.) ormay not be the originator of content (e.g., an on-demand contentprovider, an Internet provider of content of broadcast programs fordownloading, etc.). Content source 916 may include cable sources,satellite providers, on-demand providers, Internet providers,over-the-top content providers, or other providers of content. Contentsource 916 may also include a remote media server used to storedifferent types of content (including video content selected by a user),in a location remote from any of the user equipment devices. Systems andmethods for remote storage of content, and providing remotely storedcontent to user equipment are discussed in greater detail in connectionwith Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,892, issued Jul. 20, 2010, whichis hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

Media guidance data source 918 may provide media guidance data, such asthe media guidance data described above. Media guidance data may beprovided to the user equipment devices using any suitable approach. Insome embodiments, the guidance application may be a stand-aloneinteractive television program guide that receives program guide datavia a data feed (e.g., a continuous feed or trickle feed). Programschedule data and other guidance data may be provided to the userequipment on a television channel sideband, using an in-band digitalsignal, using an out-of-band digital signal, or by any other suitabledata transmission technique. Program schedule data and other mediaguidance data may be provided to user equipment on multiple analog ordigital television channels.

In some embodiments, guidance data from media guidance data source 918may be provided to users' equipment using a client-server approach. Forexample, a user equipment device may pull media guidance data from aserver, or a server may push media guidance data to a user equipmentdevice. In some embodiments, a guidance application client residing onthe user's equipment may initiate sessions with source 918 to obtainguidance data when needed, e.g., when the guidance data is out of dateor when the user equipment device receives a request from the user toreceive data. Media guidance may be provided to the user equipment withany suitable frequency (e.g., continuously, daily, a user-specifiedperiod of time, a system-specified period of time, in response to arequest from user equipment, etc.). Media guidance data source 918 mayprovide user equipment devices 902, 904, and 906 the media guidanceapplication itself or software updates for the media guidanceapplication.

In some embodiments, the media guidance data may include viewer data.For example, the viewer data may include current and/or historical useractivity information (e.g., what content the user typically watches,what times of day the user watches content, whether the user interactswith a social network, at what times the user interacts with a socialnetwork to post information, what types of content the user typicallywatches (e.g., pay TV or free TV), mood, brain activity information,etc.). The media guidance data may also include subscription data. Forexample, the subscription data may identify to which sources or servicesa given user subscribes and/or to which sources or services the givenuser has previously subscribed but later terminated access (e.g.,whether the user subscribes to premium channels, whether the user hasadded a premium level of services, whether the user has increasedInternet speed). In some embodiments, the viewer data and/or thesubscription data may identify patterns of a given user for a period ofmore than one year. The media guidance data may include a model (e.g., asurvivor model) used for generating a score that indicates a likelihooda given user will terminate access to a service/source. For example, themedia guidance application may process the viewer data with thesubscription data using the model to generate a value or score thatindicates a likelihood of whether the given user will terminate accessto a particular service or source. In particular, a higher score mayindicate a higher level of confidence that the user will terminateaccess to a particular service or source. Based on the score, the mediaguidance application may generate promotions and advertisements thatentice the user to keep the particular service or source indicated bythe score as one to which the user will likely terminate access.

Media guidance applications may be, for example, stand-aloneapplications implemented on user equipment devices. For example, themedia guidance application may be implemented as software or a set ofexecutable instructions which may be stored in storage 808, and executedby control circuitry 804 of a user equipment device 800. In someembodiments, media guidance applications may be client-serverapplications where only a client application resides on the userequipment device, and server application resides on a remote server. Forexample, media guidance applications may be implemented partially as aclient application on control circuitry 804 of user equipment device 800and partially on a remote server as a server application (e.g., mediaguidance data source 918) running on control circuitry of the remoteserver. When executed by control circuitry of the remote server (such asmedia guidance data source 918), the media guidance application mayinstruct the control circuitry to generate the guidance applicationdisplays and transmit the generated displays to the user equipmentdevices. The server application may instruct the control circuitry ofthe media guidance data source 918 to transmit data for storage on theuser equipment. The client application may instruct control circuitry ofthe receiving user equipment to generate the guidance applicationdisplays.

Content and/or media guidance data delivered to user equipment devices902, 904, and 906 may be over-the-top (OTT) content. OTT contentdelivery allows Internet-enabled user devices, including any userequipment device described above, to receive content that is transferredover the Internet, including any content described above, in addition tocontent received over cable or satellite connections. OTT content isdelivered via an Internet connection provided by an Internet serviceprovider (ISP), but a third party distributes the content. The ISP maynot be responsible for the viewing abilities, copyrights, orredistribution of the content, and may only transfer IP packets providedby the OTT content provider. Examples of OTT content providers includeYOUTUBE, NETFLIX, and HULU, which provide audio and video via IPpackets. Youtube is a trademark owned by Google Inc., Netflix is atrademark owned by Netflix Inc., and Hulu is a trademark owned by Hulu,LLC. OTT content providers may additionally or alternatively providemedia guidance data described above. In addition to content and/or mediaguidance data, providers of OTT content can distribute media guidanceapplications (e.g., web-based applications or cloud-based applications),or the content can be displayed by media guidance applications stored onthe user equipment device.

Media guidance system 900 is intended to illustrate a number ofapproaches, or network configurations, by which user equipment devicesand sources of content and guidance data may communicate with each otherfor the purpose of accessing content and providing media guidance. Theembodiments described herein may be applied in any one or a subset ofthese approaches, or in a system employing other approaches fordelivering content and providing media guidance. The following fourapproaches provide specific illustrations of the generalized example ofFIG. 9.

In one approach, user equipment devices may communicate with each otherwithin a home network. User equipment devices can communicate with eachother directly via short-range point-to-point communication schemesdescribed above, via indirect paths through a hub or other similardevice provided on a home network, or via communications network 914.Each of the multiple individuals in a single home may operate differentuser equipment devices on the home network. As a result, it may bedesirable for various media guidance information or settings to becommunicated between the different user equipment devices. For example,it may be desirable for users to maintain consistent media guidanceapplication settings on different user equipment devices within a homenetwork, as described in greater detail in Ellis et al., U.S. PatentPublication No. 2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11, 2005. Different types ofuser equipment devices in a home network may also communicate with eachother to transmit content. For example, a user may transmit content fromuser computer equipment to a portable video player or portable musicplayer.

In a second approach, users may have multiple types of user equipment bywhich they access content and obtain media guidance. For example, someusers may have home networks that are accessed by in-home and mobiledevices. Users may control in-home devices via a media guidanceapplication implemented on a remote device. For example, users mayaccess an online media guidance application on a website via a personalcomputer at their office, or a mobile device such as a PDA orweb-enabled mobile telephone. The user may set various settings (e.g.,recordings, reminders, or other settings) on the online guidanceapplication to control the user's in-home equipment. The online guidemay control the user's equipment directly, or by communicating with amedia guidance application on the user's in-home equipment. Varioussystems and methods for user equipment devices communicating, where theuser equipment devices are in locations remote from each other, isdiscussed in, for example, Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,046,801, issuedOct. 25, 2011, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in itsentirety.

In a third approach, users of user equipment devices inside and outsidea home can use their media guidance application to communicate directlywith content source 916 to access content. Specifically, within a home,users of user television equipment 902 and user computer equipment 904may access the media guidance application to navigate among and locatedesirable content. Users may also access the media guidance applicationoutside of the home using wireless user communications devices 906 tonavigate among and locate desirable content.

In a fourth approach, user equipment devices may operate in a cloudcomputing environment to access cloud services. In a cloud computingenvironment, various types of computing services for content sharing,storage or distribution (e.g., video sharing sites or social networkingsites) are provided by a collection of network-accessible computing andstorage resources, referred to as “the cloud.” For example, the cloudcan include a collection of server computing devices, which may belocated centrally or at distributed locations, that provide cloud-basedservices to various types of users and devices connected via a networksuch as the Internet via communications network 914. These cloudresources may include one or more content sources 916 and one or moremedia guidance data sources 918. In addition or in the alternative, theremote computing sites may include other user equipment devices, such asuser television equipment 902, user computer equipment 904, and wirelessuser communications device 906. For example, the other user equipmentdevices may provide access to a stored copy of a video or a streamedvideo. In such embodiments, user equipment devices may operate in apeer-to-peer manner without communicating with a central server.

The cloud provides access to services, such as content storage, contentsharing, or social networking services, among other examples, as well asaccess to any content described above, for user equipment devices.Services can be provided in the cloud through cloud computing serviceproviders, or through other providers of online services. For example,the cloud-based services can include a content storage service, acontent sharing site, a social networking site, or other services viawhich user-sourced content is distributed for viewing by others onconnected devices. These cloud-based services may allow a user equipmentdevice to store content to the cloud and to receive content from thecloud rather than storing content locally and accessing locally-storedcontent.

A user may use various content capture devices, such as camcorders,digital cameras with video mode, audio recorders, mobile phones, andhandheld computing devices, to record content. The user can uploadcontent to a content storage service on the cloud either directly, forexample, from user computer equipment 904 or wireless usercommunications device 906 having content capture feature. Alternatively,the user can first transfer the content to a user equipment device, suchas user computer equipment 904. The user equipment device storing thecontent uploads the content to the cloud using a data transmissionservice on communications network 914. In some embodiments, the userequipment device itself is a cloud resource, and other user equipmentdevices can access the content directly from the user equipment deviceon which the user stored the content.

Cloud resources may be accessed by a user equipment device using, forexample, a web browser, a media guidance application, a desktopapplication, a mobile application, and/or any combination of accessapplications of the same. The user equipment device may be a cloudclient that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or theuser equipment device may have some functionality without access tocloud resources. For example, some applications running on the userequipment device may be cloud applications, i.e., applications deliveredas a service over the Internet, while other applications may be storedand run on the user equipment device. In some embodiments, a user devicemay receive content from multiple cloud resources simultaneously. Forexample, a user device can stream audio from one cloud resource whiledownloading content from a second cloud resource. Or a user device candownload content from multiple cloud resources for more efficientdownloading. In some embodiments, user equipment devices can use cloudresources for processing operations such as the processing operationsperformed by processing circuitry described in relation to FIG. 8.

As referred herein, the term “in response to” refers to initiated as aresult of. For example, a first action being performed in response to asecond action may include interstitial steps between the first actionand the second action. As referred herein, the term “directly inresponse to” refers to caused by. For example, a first action beingperformed directly in response to a second action may not includeinterstitial steps between the first action and the second action.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in determining ameaning of the first unknown term in the text segment based on a firstcontext term and a temporal knowledge graph in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. Process 1000 may be used to determinewhether an unknown term is ambiguous and determine the meaning of theunknown term. It should be noted that process 1000 or any step thereofcould be performed on, or provided by, any of the devices shown in FIGS.8-9. For example, process 1000 may be executed by control circuitry 804(FIG. 8) as instructed by the interactive media guidance applicationimplemented on user equipment 902, 904, and/or 906 (FIG. 9). Inaddition, one or more steps of process 1000 may be incorporated into orcombined with one or more steps of any other process or embodiment.

Process 1000 begins at 1002 where control circuitry 804 identifies afirst unknown term in the text segment. For example, control circuitry804 may identify the term “Clinton” 106 as the first unknown term in thetext segment “Bernie Sanders has just called out Clinton for solicitingdonations from banks and corporations” 102. Process 1000 continues to1004 where control circuitry 804 analyzes the text segment for a firstcontext term. The interactive media guidance application may use textmining techniques to determine the first context term in text segment102. Control circuitry 804 may identify “Bernie Sanders” 104 as thefirst context term. Process 1000 continues to 1006 where controlcircuitry 804 determines a meaning of the first unknown term byaccessing a first knowledge graph associated with the first context termto identify a potential term that is the meaning of the first unknownterm. For example, control circuitry 804 may access knowledge graph 400to identify a potential term that is the meaning of the first unknownterm “Clinton” 106. Process 1000 continues to 1008 where controlcircuitry 804 determines whether the first knowledge graph includes morethan one potential term that could be the meaning of the first unknownterm. For example, control circuitry 804 may use a Boolean comparisonfunction to determine whether the value of a counter corresponding tothe number of potential terms in knowledge graph 400 is greater thanone.

If, at 1008 control circuitry 804 determines that the first knowledgegraph includes more than one potential term that could be the meaning ofthe first unknown term, process 1000 continues onto 1016. At 1016,control circuitry 804 determines a time stamp associated with the textsegment. For example, control circuitry 804 may determine that the timestamp associated with the text segment 102 to be “Jan. 11, 2016” 108.Process 1000 continues to 1018 where control circuitry 804 determinesthe meaning of the first unknown term by accessing a second knowledgegraph associated with the first context term and related to the timestamp to determine the potential term that is the meaning of the firstunknown term. For example, control circuitry 804 may access knowledgegraph 500 which is associated with the first context term “BernieSanders” 104 and related to the time stamp “Jan. 11, 2016” 108 todetermine the potential term that is the meaning of the first unknownterm “Clinton” 106. Control circuitry 804 may identify node “HillaryClinton” 510 in knowledge graph 500 as the meaning of the first unknownterm “Clinton” 106, using techniques discussed previously.

If, at 1008 control circuitry 804 determines that the first knowledgegraph does not include more than one potential term that could be themeaning of the first unknown term, process 1000 continues onto 1010. At1010, control circuitry 804 determines whether the first knowledge basedoes not include the potential term that is the meaning of the firstunknown term. If, at 1010 control circuitry 804 determines that thefirst knowledge base does not include the potential term that is themeaning of the first unknown term, process 1000 continues to 1012. At1012, process 1010 terminates. If, at 1010 control circuitry 804determines that the first knowledge base includes the potential termthat is the meaning of the first unknown term, process 1000 continues to1014. At 1014, control circuitry 804 determines that the potential termis the meaning of the first unknown term

It is contemplated that the steps or descriptions of FIG. 10 may be usedwith any other embodiment of this disclosure. In addition, the steps anddescriptions described in relation to FIG. 10 may be done in alternativeorders or in parallel to further the purposes of this disclosure. Forexample, each of these steps may be performed in any order or inparallel or substantially simultaneously to reduce lag or increase thespeed of the system or method.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in step 1018 (FIG.10) when determining the meaning of the first unknown term by accessingthe second knowledge graph associated with the first context term andrelated to the time stamp of the text segment in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. It should be noted that process 1100 orany step thereof could be performed on, or provided by, any of thedevices shown in FIGS. 8-9. For example, process 1100 may be executed bycontrol circuitry 804 (FIG. 8) as instructed by the interactive mediaguidance application implemented on user equipment 902, 904, and/or 906(FIG. 9). In addition, one or more steps of process 1100 may beincorporated into or combined with one or more steps of any otherprocess or embodiment.

Process 1100 begins at 1102 where control circuitry 804 begins a processfor determining the meaning of the first unknown term by accessing thesecond knowledge graph associated with the first context term andrelated to the time stamp to determine the potential term that is themeaning of the first unknown term. Process 1100 continues to 1104 wherecontrol circuitry 804 determines a specific time interval, where theposition of the specific time interval is determined based on the timestamp of the text segment. The specific time interval may be a defaulttime interval (e.g., two weeks). For example, the control circuitry 804determined, based on “Jan. 11, 2016” time stamp 108, that the end pointof the specific time interval should coincide with the time stamp 106.By using a specific time interval, the interactive media guidanceapplication is able to limit the amount of corpus that the knowledgegraph 500 is derived from, facilitating the identification of trendingassociations. Process 1100 continues to 1106.

At 1106, control circuitry 804 determines duration of the specific timeinterval. Control circuitry 804 may determine duration of the specifictime interval based on time indicators identified by analyzing the textsegment. Alternatively, control circuitry 804 may determine the durationof the specific time interval is based on the source of the textsegment. For example, the control circuitry 804 may set the duration ofthe specific time interval to be a week. In this case, the specific timeinterval is Jan. 5-11, 2016. Process 1100 then continues to 1108. At1108, control circuitry 804 accesses the second knowledge graphassociated with the first context term and the specific time interval.For example, control circuitry 804 accesses knowledge graph 500 which isderived from a corpus from the week of Jan. 5-11, 2016 and associatedwith the first context term “Bernie Sanders” 104. Process 1100 continuesto 1110 where control circuitry 804 determines potential terms thatcould be the meaning of the first unknown term. Techniques by whichcontrol circuitry 804 may perform this determination discussedpreviously are applicable here. For example, control circuitry 804 maydetermine from knowledge graph 500 that “Hillary Clinton” 510 is apotential term that could be the meaning of the first unknown term“Clinton” 106.

Process 1100 continues to 1112 where control circuitry 804 determineswhether the second knowledge graph includes more than one potential termthat could be the meaning of the first unknown term. Control circuitry804 may use a Boolean comparison function to perform this determination.If, at 1112, control circuitry 804 determines that the second knowledgegraph does not include more than one potential term that could be themeaning of the first unknown term, process 1100 continues to 1114. Forexample, control circuitry 804 may determine that knowledge graph 500does not include more than one potential term that could be the meaningof the first unknown term “Clinton” 106. At 1114, control circuitry 804determines whether the second knowledge graph includes no potential termthat could be the meaning of the first unknown term. If, at 1114,control circuitry 804 determines that the second knowledge graph doesinclude the potential term that could be the meaning of the firstunknown term, process 1100 continues to 1116. For example, becauseknowledge graph 500 includes “Hillary Clinton” 510, control circuitry804 may determine that knowledge graph 500 does include a potential termthat could be the meaning of the first unknown term. At 1116, controlcircuitry 804 determines that the potential term is the meaning of thefirst unknown term. For example, control circuitry 804 determines that“Hillary Clinton” 510 is the meaning of the first unknown term “Clinton”106.

If, at 1114, control circuitry 804 determines that the second knowledgegraph does include the potential term that could be the meaning of thefirst unknown term, process 1100 continues to 1118. Additionally if, at1112, control circuitry 804 determines that the second knowledge graphdoes include more than one potential term that could be the meaning ofthe first unknown term, process 1100 continues to 1118. At 1118, controlcircuitry 804 adjusts at least one of duration of the specific timeinterval and the position of the specific time interval. Process 1100continues from 1118 to 1120. At 1120, control circuitry 804 accesses athird knowledge graph associated with the first context term and thespecific time interval to determine the potential term that is themeaning of the first unknown term.

It is contemplated that the steps or descriptions of FIG. 11 may be usedwith any other embodiment of this disclosure. In addition, the steps anddescriptions described in relation to FIG. 11 may be done in alternativeorders or in parallel to further the purposes of this disclosure. Forexample, each of these steps may be performed in any order or inparallel or substantially simultaneously to reduce lag or increase thespeed of the system or method.

The processes discussed above are intended to be illustrative and notlimiting. One skilled in the art would appreciate that the steps of theprocesses discussed herein may be omitted, modified, combined, and/orrearranged, and any additional steps may be performed without departingfrom the scope of the invention. More generally, the above disclosure ismeant to be exemplary and not limiting. Only the claims that follow aremeant to set bounds as to what the present invention includes.Furthermore, it should be noted that the features and limitationsdescribed in any one embodiment may be applied to any other embodimentherein, and flowcharts or examples relating to one embodiment may becombined with any other embodiment in a suitable manner, done indifferent orders, or done in parallel. In addition, the systems andmethods described herein may be performed in real time. It should alsobe noted that the systems and/or methods described above may be appliedto, or used in accordance with, other systems and/or methods.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of selecting meanings for terms susceptible to multiple meanings in a query submitted to an interactive media guidance application, the method comprising: identifying an unknown term in a query received through the media guidance application; determining a context and a time of the received query; using a first knowledge graph associated with the context to determine one or more meanings of the unknown term, the first knowledge graph defining a first set of potential meanings and associations therebetween; and in response to determining more than one meaning of the unknown term: using a second knowledge graph associated with a specific time interval corresponding with the time of the received query to select one meaning from the more than one meaning of the unknown term, the second knowledge graph defining a second set of potential meanings and associations therebetween; determining a result of the query based on the selected one meaning of the unknown term; determining that the second knowledge graph includes more than one meaning of the unknown term; adjusting at least one of a duration of the specific time interval and a position in time of the specific time interval; determining the meaning of the unknown term using a third knowledge graph associated with the context and the specific time interval to determine the meaning of the unknown term; and transmitting the result of the query in the media guidance application.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the query is received through a voice recognition interface of the media guidance application.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the query is a text query.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the first set of potential meanings comprises a plurality of entities.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the second set of potential meanings comprises a plurality of entities.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining a context further comprises text mining the query.
 7. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining that the first knowledge graph does not include any meaning of the unknown term; identifying a further context of the query; and determining the meaning of the unknown term based on the further context.
 8. A method of selecting meanings for terms susceptible to multiple meanings in a query submitted to an interactive media guidance application, the method comprising: identifying an unknown term in a query received through the media guidance application; determining a context and a time of the received query; using a first knowledge graph associated with the context to determine one or more meanings of the unknown term, the first knowledge graph defining a first set of potential meanings and associations therebetween; and in response to determining more than one meaning of the unknown term: using a second knowledge graph associated with a specific time interval corresponding with the time of the received query to select one meaning from the more than one meaning of the unknown term, the second knowledge graph defining a second set of potential meanings and associations therebetween; determining a result of the query based on the selected one meaning of the unknown term; and determining that the second knowledge graph does not include any meaning of the unknown term; adjusting at least one of a duration of the specific time interval and a position in time of the specific time interval; determining the meaning of the unknown term using a third knowledge graph associated with the context and the specific time interval to determine the meaning of the unknown term; and transmitting the result of the query in the media guidance application.
 9. A system for selecting meanings for terms susceptible to multiple meanings in a query submitted to an interactive media guidance application, the system comprising: a storage device; and control circuitry configured to: identify an unknown term in a query received through the media guidance application; determine a context and a time of the received query; use a first knowledge graph associated with the context to determine one or more meanings of the unknown term, the first knowledge graph defining a first set of potential meanings and associations therebetween; and in response to determining more than one meaning of the unknown term: use a second knowledge graph associated with a specific time interval corresponding with the time of the received query to select one meaning from the more than one meaning of the unknown term, the second knowledge graph defining a second set of potential meanings and associations therebetween; determine a result of the query based on the selected one meaning of the unknown term; determine that the second knowledge graph includes more than one meaning of the unknown term; adjust at least one of a duration of the specific time interval and a position in time of the specific time interval; determine the meaning of the unknown term using a third knowledge graph associated with the context and the specific time interval to determine the meaning of the unknown term; and transmit the result of the query in the media guidance application.
 10. The system of claim 9, wherein the query is received through a voice recognition interface of the media guidance application.
 11. The system of claim 9, wherein the query is a text query.
 12. The system of claim 9, wherein the first set of potential meanings comprises a plurality of entities.
 13. The system of claim 9, wherein the second set of potential meanings comprises a plurality of entities.
 14. The system of claim 9, wherein the determining a context further comprises text mining the query.
 15. The system of claim 9, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to: determine that the first knowledge graph does not include any meaning of the unknown term; identify a further context of the query; and determine the meaning of the unknown term based on the further context.
 16. A system for selecting meanings for terms susceptible to multiple meanings in a query submitted to an interactive media guidance application, the system comprising: a storage device; and control circuitry configured to: identify an unknown term in a query received through the media guidance application; determine a context and a time of the received query; use a first knowledge graph associated with the context to determine one or more meanings of the unknown term, the first knowledge graph defining a first set of potential meanings and associations therebetween; and in response to determining more than one meaning of the unknown term: use a second knowledge graph associated with a specific time interval corresponding with the time of the received query to select one meaning from the more than one meaning of the unknown term, the second knowledge graph defining a second set of potential meanings and associations therebetween; determine a result of the query based on the selected one meaning of the unknown term; determine that the second knowledge graph does not include any meaning of the unknown term; adjust at least one of a duration of the specific time interval and a position in time of the specific time interval; determine the meaning of the unknown term using a third knowledge graph associated with the context and the specific time interval to determine the meaning of the unknown term; and transmit the result of the query in the media guidance application. 